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  I found my ice cream, grabbed a spoon and a Pepsi, and headed to my bedroom to drown myself in sorrow. I flipped on Jerry Springer, got undressed, and threw on one of my home-alone nightgowns, a tee I picked up in New Carrolton Mall with “I Just Can’t Stand a Broke-Ass Man” imprinted on both the front and back. I saved the good supply of nighties for when there was a man in the house, a rare occurrence. I laughed at the women who were fighting over sorry-ass mofos on a talk show, but I am not sure whether I pitied them or related to them and was really laughing at myself. Whatever the case, I tore into my unhealthy snacks and settled in for yet another boring Friday night.

  janessa

  Friday night. Millennium night. There were only two shows I was absolutely crazy about, other than Jerry Springer of course, ’cause everyone loves Jerry, Millennium, and The X-Files. Something about that supernatural, alien, not-of-this-world shit gets to me. It was the season premiere, and I was as excited as a virgin teenage boy in a whorehouse about to get some. I waited all week to see the show, listening to plugs for it on WPGC 95.5 and catching a few of the previews on Fox. I even stopped by Giant Food on my way home to pick up some Pop Secret Movie Theater butter popcorn for the big night. Don’t you know someone in my family had to ruin it for me!

  Most of the time on Friday nights, my parents turned in early, since Momma was the type who still got up at 5:00 A.M., even though she had been retired for more than ten years. Pops preferred to pass the hell out after he got in from his maintenance job. My lard-ass brother Fred pissed me off though. His ass is so big, he could shut off a water main eruption with the crack of his anus alone. There he was, laid out on the couch, snoring and sounding like an off-key chorus of hyenas. He had his shoes and socks off, and the au naturel odor emitting from them bad boys was stronger than the butter flavoring on my popcorn. I turned the TV up louder with the remote and held my nose with one hand while I shoveled popcorn into my mouth with the other. I made a mental note to definitely get a tube for my bedroom on my next payday, ’cause something had to give.

  It was hot as hell up in the crib that night. Felt like Satan was breathing down the nape of my neck. I hated living in the projects. No central air. Roaches as big as rats, rats as big as dogs, and enough hoodlums to fill a state penitentiary. For months, I had considered asking Tempest if I could crash at her place. I knew she would say yes, but I also knew she would go into her mother-figure mode and get all in my grill about shit. I got enough of that from my real mother, so I didn’t even go that route. I give props where props are due, though. If it wasn’t for Tempest, I never would have gone through with night school and gotten my GED. If it wasn’t for her, I never would have taken the postal exam and landed a job as a clerk at the local branch.

  Millennium went off. The part I heard of it over Fred’s snoring was pretty damn good. I was going to watch Jerry Springer, but the baked beans Fred had eaten for dinner kicked in, and the farts emitting from his ass could have been bottled as weed killer. I couldn’t take the madness one more second.

  I went up to my bedroom and tried to crash, but I had to leave the window open so I wouldn’t suffocate. All hell had broken loose outside, and the noise was way past ridiculous. It was the first of the month, the busiest day of every month for the liquor stores and drug dealers because that’s when all the junkies and addicts cash their welfare checks to pay for their habits instead of providing for their children. The crack house across the street, the one run by that homeboy of Ripuoff’s, Lewis, was jumping that night. I hear Ripuoff is doing twenty years to life in Lorton for manufacturing that Niagra shit. Too bad I didn’t get a couple of grape jelly jars full before he got sent up the river. I know some brothas who could use that shit for real.

  I couldn’t sleep, my nipples were harder than Ping-Pong balls and my beeper had not gone off all day. Where were all my dicks? Where was the beef? I knew the answer. They were out getting their jollies off with some hoochie mommas or hitting the clubs with their boys.

  I needed a car bad. I was willing to settle for a hoopty if I had to. I didn’t care if the ride was held together by duct tape and sounded like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as long as it could get me from point A to point B. I sat up in the bed and said, “Fuck it!” I knew Tempest would be pissed if I called and threw her a guilt trip about leaving me at home with Fred’s stank ass, but I just had to get out of there. I was bored, I was lonely, I was horny. I had gone without getting my kitty kat stroked for more than four months, and I was reasonably sure Tempest hadn’t had sex since Kangol hats were the bomb. We needed to get out and explore our horizons. We needed to do the sistahgurl thing and hang out. We needed to find some fione-ass men. I got up off the bed and headed back down to the living room, which smelled like a natural gas explosion, to find the phone.

  geren

  I am still trying to figure out why I let Dvontè talk me into going clubbing that night. Looking back at it now, I realize it must have been fate. I was exhausted after a long day at the firm, and the last thing I needed to do was deal with a smoke-filled room full of desperate women. That’s all I seemed to run into, desperate women in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life.

  Some of them were subtle in their endeavors, but most were those kind who frequent churches and cabarets looking for Mr. Right. The ones at nightclubs generally came right out with it and held nothing back. Tits and ass busting out of dresses two sizes too small, brushing up against me and sneaking a feel of my dick on the dance floor, whispering nasty thoughts in my ear. Sure, I slipped a few times and took advantage of the sexual favors they were offering. The only problem was they would expect me to fall in love or lust with some imaginary bomb-ass pussy in the span of one roll in the hay and a hundred pumps, when all I’d ever wanted was a quick sexual release.

  I decided there would definitely be no more of that. Times are hard, and penicillin no longer cures everything. Frankly, I preferred taking care of business myself somewhere between flipping through the pages of Ebony Male or Sports Illustrated on the toilet and hopping in the shower to get ready for work. It was safer, and my palm never expected me to propose to it afterward with a three-carat diamond.

  Dvontè, on the other hand, was a hoochie-loving man. His philosophy was, the more punanny the better. I used to tell him he was going to run up on some lethal pussy one day and pay the piper, but he always replied, “We all have to go someday. I want to die laid up in the bed with my dick inside some hot, juicy pussy!”

  Dvontè was my boy, but his playa behavior was getting old, and our outlooks on women and relationships were far from mutual.

  All I ever really wanted was one woman who could satisfy all my needs, and not just my sexual ones. I am an avid believer that once there is an emotional bond and friendship, everything else falls smoothly into formation. Unfortunately, most of the sistahs I had dealings with were not on the same wavelength. I have never been anyone’s fool, and my eyes were wide open to the fact that women were after me for two reasons: my looks were above average, and I had money. Lots of it.

  There were a few sistahs who I honestly believed were genuine until they started asking me for things right and left. One even had the nerve to ask me to buy her a Lexus after the third date. She never heard from me again, and I suspect she is still catching the Metrobus unless she lucked out and hooked up with a so-called successful drug dealer who simply didn’t give a fuck. Any self-righteous man who attained his wealth the honest way, through hard work and perseverance, wouldn’t fall for an obvious gold digger like that—although I must admit that sports figures and entertainers do have a tendency to do that very thing. They are so overcome by the legions of pantiless groupies flinging themselves at them that they fall for the game. Fools, I tell you, because Geren Kincaid would never go out like that.

  Looking around the club, I spotted all the various categories of women. First, there were the spandex queens. You know the type. Sistahs who have the nerve to squeeze into a size-six spandex outfit wh
en they really wear a size twenty-six. More breast meat hanging outside of their tops than inside. Pants so tight that it makes a brotha want to break out an ink pen and play connect-the-dots on the rolls of cellulite protruding through the material. Sistahs who have to take a deep breath before they even attempt to sit down because the outfit is so tight they can’t bend their legs. I am not saying I have anything against large women. I love all my black queens, but I prefer women who carry themselves with class. If a woman puts on high heels in the morning and they are flats by the afternoon, common sense should tell her she has no business sporting spandex. That’s all I am saying.

  Then there were the pedestal women, sistahs who think they are so damn fine a man better not even attempt to approach them. They come to the club early and take up all the good seats at the bar or at the tables by the dance floor so they can sit there and talk trash about other people all night, so worried about what other people are doing, what other people have on, how people are dancing, that they don’t even want to take a potty break for fear of missing something. They are not even fooling me! Half of them sit there sipping on the same drink the whole damn night because they can only afford one and still make their rent payment. Often you only see these sistahs at clubs around the first and fifteenth of the month, after they’ve cashed their paychecks. Ninety-nine percent of them get paid on Friday and are pinching pennies by Monday morning.

  Then there are the leeches, hitting up every brotha they can grab by the elbow for a drink. All the young hustlers love those kind of women, because they automatically think if they buy a couple of drinks, the sistah will give them an obligatory fuck. Most of them end up sitting in the bucket seat of their Ford Explorer or Chevy Blazer by the end of the night whacking off to Puff Daddy and the Family—mind you, with about fifty dollars less in their pockets.

  Let us not forget the video queens—sistahs who have more fake stuff on them than real. Weaves, colored contacts, acrylic nails, gold caps on their teeth, silicone breasts, the whole works. Inside the club, under the dim lighting, some of them look fine as all hell. Wait till you get them outside, though. Some of them are straight up hurting. I mean hurt!

  I stood there, leaning on the bar and sipping on a Hennessy and Coke, trying to keep myself from busting out laughing at Dvontè. Speaking of hurt, the sistah he was trying to mack looked like she could play the lead in A Bug’s Life. He was sinking low, even for him. Brotha man must have wanted some bad to be talking to her. She had eyes that looked like they were about to burst out of her head and was so skinny, if she swallowed a marble you would have swore up and down she was nine months pregnant.

  I saw him glance over at me, darting his eyes down at her breasts, trying to get me to size her up. The only problem was, there was nothing to size up. My twelve-year-old baby cousin Rhonda had a better-built body than the sistah he was trying to get up on. She was so skinny, her nipples were touching.

  I pulled up the sleeve of my navy Hugo Boss suit and glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even midnight yet. We’d gotten there about eleven, and I was ready to go ten minutes later, but I promised Dvontè we could hang out. If nothing else, I am always a man of my word.

  dvontè

  Geren was getting on my last damn nerve. Always trying to playa hate. Like they say, “Don’t hate the playa. Hate the game.” He was just mad because the only woman who had tried to step to him looked old enough to have an autographed copy of the Bible. I mean, she looked older than my grandmother. The sistah was probably a waitress at the Last Supper. I chuckled because he had some ugly woman eyeing his ass. I know he sensed her, but I don’t blame him for not looking her way. She was so ugly, it looked like her neck threw up. Truth be known, though, if she could give good head, I would have closed my eyes and let her suck me like a lollipop.

  I’ve never in my life used a woman. They use me. I just happen to get a little ass in the process. Hell, if it were not for men like me, there would be hundreds of thousands of lonely sistahs in the world. I make a woman’s life complete. Give her something to look forward to after a long, stressful day at the office. Put a little pep in her step.

  Let’s face it. Most women, and men for that matter, spend the better part of every day doing something they hate to do: working. The majority of people work to pay bills and make ends meet. The only time they really get a chance to live it up is after work. I’m there waiting for these ladies when they come home with wet lips and a savory dick. What more could they ask for?

  I’m a precious commodity these days—a black man with a job, a place, and no secrets hiding in the closet. I’m heterosexual, drug free, and I’m not a convicted felon. That alone makes me worth my weight in gold. Add to that the fact that I work, have my own crib and car, and what you get is a man’s man. That’s me. Dvontè Richardson is a prince among men.

  I have always been straight up with the sistahs. I want to get some ass and then roll out. I never fake the funk. If they don’t want to play by my rules, then they can get to steppin’ and tell their story walking. Sistahs always blame the man when something goes wrong, as if they weren’t even present when the shit hit the fan. Like they were having an out-of-body experience, witnessing the whole sordid mess from afar. Who the hell are they trying to fool? I know my rights! I have the right to remain as freaky as I want to be for as long as I want to be. Simple as that! Looking back on things now, I should have kept my ass at home that night. Most of the sistahs were tore up from the floor up, and the one I ended up getting with almost ruined my whole damn life, even though she was fine. There is something to be said for making it a Blockbuster night. No doubt I would have been better off watching rented flicks.

  CHAPTER 2

  we be clubbin’

  “’bout damn time you got here, Tempest!” Janessa took a deep breath so she could bend her midsection to get into the car. The red sheath she had on was too tight to maneuver in, and she barely managed to get into Tempest’s Camry without ripping open a seam. “I was ready to bounce an hour ago.”

  “You have a lot of damn nerve,” Tempest hissed back. “Consider yourself lucky I even showed. I had other plans for tonight, but I canceled them when you phoned me with that sob story of yours about being lonely and Fred farting in your face.”

  “Chile, please! You know you weren’t doing a thing except sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself.” Janessa reached over the gearshift to turn the radio down a few notches. “You think your music is loud enough? Sheesh!”

  “No, not really,” Tempest replied, turning it back up. “That’s my cut!” she exclaimed, referring to “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” by Deborah Cox.

  “Every song is your damn cut,” Janessa snapped back at her, searching through her tan leather handbag for a tube of ruby red lipstick.

  “Yeah, but I can seriously relate to this one. I know exactly where the sistah is coming from when she sings about giving up on love.”

  “I bet you do,” Janessa sneered sarcastically. “Anyone can look at you and tell your ass is celibate.”

  Tempest pulled off from the curb in front of Janessa’s house with a jerk. “You are so damn silly! How in the world can someone look at me and tell I’m celibate? It’s not like I’m wearing a sign on my ass or anything.”

  “No, there’s no sign on your ass. It’s just written all over your freakin’ face.” Janessa reached up to turn on the interior light, but Tempest stopped her. “Sistahs can tell when their homies aren’t gettin’ none. It’s all in the eyes.”

  “No, use this.” Tempest handed Janessa a lighted compact mirror, igging the analysis. “The glare from the overhead light impairs my driving.”

  “Thanks,” Janessa said, opening it and expertly applying the lipstick, which matched her nails perfectly. She glanced over at Tempest. “You look like a nun in that black suit.”

  “Not a nun. A lady. Maybe you should try the conservative approach sometime.” Tempest giggled, looking Janessa up and down and making no bones about he
r disapproval of the outfit.

  “Hmph, yeah, right,” Janessa smirked, brushing off the remark. “So what were you really doing when I called? Hmm? Watching television or doing those damn puzzle books again?”

  Tempest didn’t want to tell her the truth—that she’d been drowning her sorrow in ice cream and Pepsi. That she was hoping a man, just about any man, would call, but the only calls she got the whole evening were from her mother and a telemarketer wanting to know if she wanted home delivery of the Washington Post.

  She sighed. “Why are you all up in my business, Janessa? It’s not like you have a man!”

  “I’ve had one since the last time you had one. That’s for damn sure. If Howard hadn’t gotten locked up on those bullshit charges, he and I would still be together.”

  “Bullshit charges?” Tempest chuckled, trying to rationalize Janessa’s thought process. “His ass got caught red-handed pulling an armed robbery, and you keep trying to insist he was framed. You need to tell that nonsense to someone who isn’t up on such thangs like me.”

  “Those charges were trumped up,” Janessa stated defensively. “Howard was an innocent bystander. They just locked him up because he’s a black man.”

  “Whatever, Janessa, but I saw that shit on the Fox ten-o’clock news, and he looked guilty as all hell to me. He came out good only getting ten to fifteen years. His ass could have gotten life.”

  “Howard is not going to do fifteen years. Not even ten. He told me when he called the other day that he would be out in about—”

  “Called? You mean to tell me you’re still letting his sorry ass call you collect from Lorton?”

  Janessa rolled her eyes. “He only calls about once a week,” she said, clucking her tongue. “It’s not like he calls every day. Besides, I miss him, and I’m the only sunshine he has to brighten up his dreary situation. I bring him hope. He told me so himself.”